Saturday, August 30, 2008

Metallica. They made it into the New York Times on the occasion of their European tour and the upcoming album entitled "Death Magnetic". Such a waste of print space, it almost hurts. Like the documentary "Some Kind of Monster" showed, endulging into following the creative process of this band nowdays is like taking a ten days walk in the desert after a fight with your long faithful camel. Briefly put, the two song from the new album published on the Internet make me at least skeptic : the solos and the Metal riffing are back but the drums still sound like and empty can of beans and I see no coherence throughout the songs, it sounds like good riffs artificially patched together just to put out a new album; worst of all, James actually sings... But the guys are the best in the business, that's for sure. There is so much buzz on the Internet about their newcoming album that no day passes by without Blabbermouth or Metal Hammer mentioning something about it and making news from anything. The stardom is not my dominion, under certain circumstances it's just crap and you know very well it's not a substitute for quality. But it pays in the short run.

Reviewing the classics part one. Exodus really kicks ass. If you didn't know, Kirk Hammet was part of this band back in 1983 before joining Metallica and their 1985 Bonded by Blood is a landmark album in Thrash Metal. My first Exodus listening was at this year's Wacken Open Air. Strong band, shitty motivational speech : "We come from the United States to teach you motherfuckers a Lesson in Violence". "Well, I come from Transylvania to feel good, have fun and listen to your music and most of all not be called a motherfucker. As far as violence is concerned, Kreator can teach you a lesson or two about Raising the Flag of Hate without insulting people". But they're good, old-school like good, Blacklist is one of my favourites and I recommend it.

Reviewing the classics part two. Immortal. After a 6 years hiatus a new album might be on the way, at least according to Wikipedia. I don't necessarily need a new Immortal album to complete my Yeti mongering personality, but it would be so much fun, so adrenaline intensive. Grasping Immortal is quite interesting, either you love them from the first riff either you make fun of them because of their looks; in my case the corpse painted Abbath stirrs apocalyptic images of an evil bunny rabbit while daydreaming but once I hit the play button on Solarfall I transgress life and human existence, or whatever you want to call it, into eternal permafrost. Or the alternative beer with friends.

This being said, I wish you all an excellent in-between time after the morning coffee and before the teeth brushing or vice versa.